Memento Mori (short story)

"Memento Mori" is a short story written by Jonathan Nolan and published in the March 2001 edition of Esquire magazine. It was the basis for the film Memento directed by his brother Christopher Nolan.[1] The name refers to memento mori, a symbolic or artistic expression of the Latin phrase meaning "remember that you will die."

Contents

In the story, a man named Earl has anterograde amnesia. Because of his inability to remember things for more than a few minutes, he uses notes and tattoos to keep track of new information. Earl owes his condition to an attack against him and his wife by an unknown assailant. His wife was raped and killed and Earl suffered severe head injuries, resulting in his amnesia. The story jumps between two time-frames. The first time frame finds Earl confined to a mental institution in which he learns through written notes he had left himself. The second time frame finds Earl on the run after he escapes from the mental institution. He learns this through a third-person narrative. Earl's goal after escaping the institution is to find the man who murdered his wife and get revenge. This proves quite difficult for Earl since he lacks the ability to remember what happens to him on a daily basis. Using his wits and the help of the third-person narrative, Earl eventually succeeds in getting revenge on the man who murdered his wife, but is unable to remember his success. However, in the end Earl rereads the first note, leading to a cliffhanger to the fact that he might restart the cycle and kill another man that looks similar to the killer that Earl "remembers".

Nolan got the idea for the story from his general psychology class at Georgetown University.[2] Nolan pitched the idea to his brother Christopher during a cross-country road trip from Chicago to Los Angeles. His brother responded to the idea, and encouraged him to write a first draft.[3][page needed] After Jonathan returned to Washington, D.C., to finish college, he sent his brother a draft two months later, and Christopher set to work on a screenplay, while Jonathan began finishing the short story.[3][page needed]

Christopher eventually made the feature filmMemento, starring Guy Pearce, which was inspired from Jonathan's story, although radically different. For example, in the short story, Earl is confined to a mental institution and the main character in the movie is not. Also, in the movie, the protagonist's attempt to seek revenge on his wife's killer is manipulated by other characters. In the short story, other characters, such as doctors, are only briefly mentioned. Jonathan's short story was eventually published in Esquire magazine, although it can also be found in James Mottram's making-of book about the film, The Making of Memento, and as a hidden special feature on the film's special edition DVD.[4]